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A Modified Trier Social Stress Test for Vulnerable Mexican American Adolescents
Published on: July 10, 2017
[The traumatic passage of migrant children at school]
D Derivois1, N Jaumard, A Karray-Khemiri
1Centre de Recherche en psychologie et psychopathologie clinique (CRPPC), université Lyon-2, 5, avenue Pierre-Mendès-France, 69676 Bron cedex, France. daniel.derivois@univ-lyon2.fr
Introduction:
At school, the migrant child has to face an intense symbolization that articulates the experience of migration, the family past and the availability of the school environment to accommodate beyond its primary mission of education. Migration is a potential source of trauma. This article aims to show the complexity of the processes involved in the psyche of the child and discusses aspects of latency as well as intercultural issues.
Method:
The study was conducted on the psychological examination of a 7-year old migrant child that we met at school. The meetings took place because of difficulties for the child, highlighted by the school. The data are from interviews with the child's teacher and the mother of the child, as well as the projective methods available to the child, the Rorschach test and the game Play Mobile. Both tools have been used as a method of investigation and as a support for mediation.
Results:
Media and projective interviews reveal the mother's lack of understanding of behavioral problems of children. The mother appeared to be emotionally unavailable for her son. She had a lot of difficulty in containing him. As for the child, he tried to maintain the presence of an absent father, portrayed the story of his immigration and his growing awareness of the processes involved. The child invested the clinical relationship and expressed every effort to symbolize the experience of pre-migration and migration times.
Discussion:
The analysis reveals different types of passages: family passage, institutional passage, and projective passage that requires a mental reorganization of previous experiences. It appears that the environment is very important in the psychological construction of the child. The difficulty of investing school knowledge comes from a lack of evidence of his personal history. The discussion raises some issues of migration latency period as well as some problems with changing cultural context. To symbolize and build an intercultural Me, the migrant child needs to rely on stable environments.
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